UC-NRLF 


H    D 
205 

M52 

1898 

MAIN 


GIFT  OF 


Supplement  to  THE  ^EU/  EARTH,  .April, 


CHRISTIAN    ECONOMICS 

NUMBER    TWO 


The  Two  Great  Commandments 
in  Economics 


COPYRIGHTED    i£ 


JAMES    E.   MILLS 


THE   NEW  EARTH 
No.  540  Pearl  Street.  New  York 


/ 1 

CHRISTIAN    ECONOMICS  — II 


©ammaitlrmettta 

in  lEcononws 


I 

fHE  broadest  and  most  comprehensive  statement  of 
principles  of  philosophy  and  wisdom  of  human 
life  is  : 

"  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and 
with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  mind.  This  is  the 
great  and  first  commandment. 

And  a  second  like  unto  it  is  this  :  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neigh- 
bor as  thyself" 

To  feel  as  much  as  we  may  of  the  infinite  force  and 
scope  of  these  grandest  of  uttered  thoughts,  and  to  draw 
what  we  may  of  guidance  for  the  conduct  of  life  from 
them,  it  is  needful  to  recall  the  spirit  in  which  they  are 
spoken  ;  for  "  The  words  that  I  have  spoken  unto  you 
are  spirit  and  are  life."  It  is  holy  spirit,  hallowed  by  in- 
finite and  unalloyed  love  and  desire  to  bless.  Command- 
ments given  in  such  a  spirit  are  guidance  in  the  way  of 
well-being  and  happiness.  They  are  the  directions  of  the 
Father  to  his  children,  teaching  them  how  "  they  may  have 
life,  and  may  have  it  abundantly  ;"  how  they  may  receive 
in  the  greatest  fulness  and  intensity  the  good  of  life  within 
and  life  without  which  he  wills  to  impart  to  them.  Com- 


2  The  Two  Great  Commandments 

ing  down  to  our  states  of  selfishness  and  worldliness, 
they  often  sound  imperative  and  exacting,  like  the  words 
of  one  demanding  his  due.  This  quality  is  not  in  the 
voice  that  is  speaking,  but  in  the  ears  that  are  hearing. 
There  is  nothing  imperative  or  exacting  in  the  two  great 
commandments,  other  than  their  certainty  and  universality. 
They  are  law  of  being  for  men,  and  are  inevitable  la\v  to 
all  men.  As  no  matter  can  escape  the  law  of  gravitation, 
so  no  human  life  can  escape  the  law  of  love.  Where  its 
sway  is  least  obstructed,  there  character  is  most  elevated 
and  complete ;  and  it  follows  those  who  fall  through  per- 
verted free  agency  down  to  the  depths  of  perversion  and 
misery. 

"Whither  shall  I  go  from  thy  spirit? 

Or  whither  shall  I  flee  from  thy  presence  ? 

If  I  ascend  up  into  heaven,  thou  art  there  ; 

If  I  make  my  bed  in  sheol,  behold,  thou  art  there. 
If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning, 
And  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea, 

Even  there  shall  thy  hand  lead  me, 

And  thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me. 
If  I  say,  Surely  the  darkness  shall  cover  me, 
And  the  light  about  me  shall  be  night, 

Even  the  darkness  hideth  not  from  thee, 

But  the  night  shineth  as  the  day." 

No  man  is  so  low  that  he  cannot  take  the  first  step 
upward  by  heeding  the  law  of  love,  and  no  angel  so  high 
that  it  is  not  law  of  life  to  him. 

The  two  great  commandments  are  law  of  conditions 
as  well  as  of  conduct.  Conditions  that  conflict  with  the 
first  great  law  of  living  are  evil  conditions.  We  miss  the 
scope  and  limit  the  application  of  a  divine  law  of  life  if 
we  hear  in  it  only  commandment  to  be  obeyed  in  conduct 
and  motive.  God,  in  his  providence,  surrounds  men  with 
conditions  that  tend,  as  strongly  as  is  consistent  with  their 
freedom,  to  lead  them  to  accept  the  law  of  love ;  and  men 
co-operate  with  that  providence  when  they  seek  to  estab- 
lish and  extend  such  conditions  for  their  fellows  and  them- 
selves. 


in  Economics  3 

The  law  of  love  is  also  the  law  for  conditions  of  groups 
of  men  as  well  as  of  individuals ;  of  the  married  pair,  of 
the  home,  of  communities,  of  nations,  and  of  the  race.  Law 
or  custom  of  a  people  which  conflicts  with  the  law  of  love 
is  as  truly  an  evil  as  sinful  deed  or  habit  of  an  individual. 
Wherever  there  is  human  motive  or  conduct  to  be  direct- 
ed, or  condition  of  human  life  to  be  shaped,  or  human  char- 
acter to  be  formed  or  influenced,  there  the  law  of  love  ap- 
plies; and  there,  if  the  law  be  not  applied,  follow  arrest 
of  development,  meagerness  of  life,  and  misery. 

The  law  of  love,  both  love  to  God  and  love  to  man, 
finds  its  chief  ultimate  expression,  and  the  basis  on  which 
it  rests,  and  the  means  by  which  it  comes  into  real  exist- 
ence, in  service  of  man  to  man.  "  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it 
unto  one  of  these,  my  brethren,  these  least,  ye  did  it  unto 
me,"  said  the  Master  to  his  disciples  in  the  conclusion  and 
summing  up  of  his  great  symbolic  account  of  the  judgment 
which  truth  passes  on  qualities  of  human  character.  And 
his  teachings  from  first  to  last,  and  his  own  life,  all  go  to 
show  that  service  to  God  is  through  and  by  service  to 
men.  In  his  system  of  teaching  and  living,  sacrifice  is 
incident,  worship  is  incident,  service  is  supreme.  In  the 
deeper  meaning  that  flashes  out  through  the  letter  here 
and  there,  so  that  he  who  runs  may  read,  and  which  un- 
derlies all  we  know  of  what  he  said  and  what  he  is,  sal- 
vation or  health  of  soul  is  love  of  serving.  Service  in 
some  form  may  be,  and  in  the  case  of  most  men  is,  a  ne- 
cessity of  the  situation  in  which  they  find  themselves ;  but 
love  of  serving  is  from  above,  and  is  the  goal  of  Christian 

life. 

It  is  true  that  love  to  the  Lord  has  other  expression, 
in  prayer  to  him,  in  thought  of  him,  and  in  trust  and  de- 
pendence upon  him.  And  service  cannot  become  a  work 
of  love  without  some  thought  of  God,  though  the  thought 
may  be  in  almost  hidden  depths  of  consciousness.  But 
worship  becomes  true  and  loving  worship  when  the  wor- 
shiper comes  to  it  heart-free  of  guile  from  serving  fellow 
men.  "Not  every  one  that  saith  unto  me,  Lord,  Lord, 


4  The  Two  Great  Commandments 

shall  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven ;  but  he  that  doeth 
the  will  of  my  Father  which  is  in  heaven."  The  heart  that 
is  warmed  by  doing  for  fellow  men  throbs  with  new  life 
when  it  comes  for  a  time  from  serving  to  direct  thought 
of  God,  and  returns  to  serving  with  new  vigor. 

Still  more  than  in  worship,  love  to  the  Lord  is  ex- 
pressed in  shunning  evils  as  sins  against  God ;  for  without 
shunning  sins  as  against  God,  neither  worship  nor  service 
from  the  heart  are  possible.  There  is  no  room  in  the  heart 
that  is  occupied  with  sin  for  pure  worship  of  God  or  pure 
love  of  serving. 

But  shunning  evils  as  sins  against  God  is  preparatory 
means  or  way  ol  coming  into  fuller  love,  and  worship  is 
an  incident  of  love.  The  chief  expression  of  love  is  serv- 
ice, and  the  law  of  love  as  it  comes  down  to  the  plane  of 
outward  conduct  and  conditions,  is  the  law  of  service. 

In  the  form  of  law  of  service,  the  two  great  command- 
ments reach  down  to  the  lowest  plane  of  life ;  for  human 
society  is  impossible  without  some  form  of  service,  and  so- 
ciety is,  first  of  all,  a  system  of  mutual  service.  Shun  it  as 
men  may,  they  cannot  escape  it ;  they  must  either  enjoy  the 
benefits  of  conforming  to  it,  or  suffer  the  penalties  of  break- 
ing it;  and  shunning  merely  brings  about  meeting  it  on  a 
lower  level  of  living.  By  law  of  physical  existence,  mutual 
service  must  be  a  habit  of  life  with  most  men.  Individuals 
may  escape  it  in  part  by  force  or  fraud  or  privilege  sus- 
tained by  laws  or  customs,  but  such  escape  entails  loss  of 
character,  and  its  own  peculiar  degradation  in  every  case ; 
and  in  society  where  law  and  custom  are  shaped  to  Christ- 
ian principles,  the  most  selfish  man  will  find  what  the  econ- 
omist Bastiat  calls  "the  great  law  of  service  for  service" 
inevitable  law  of  being. 

But,  though  the  laws  and  customs  and  conditions  of 
society  may  tend,  and  in  a  truly  Christian  order  would  all 
tend,  to  lead  the  individual  to  a  life  of  serving  his  fellow 
men,  and  would  render  living  without  service  impracticable 
to  an  adult  in  normal  condition  of  body  and  mind,  they 
cannot  compel  love  of  serving.  Love  of  serving  is  love 


///  Economics  5 

of  the  neighbor.  It  is  the  goal  of  life.  No  man  is  born 
into  it  at  the  first  birth,  and  coming  into  it  is  birth  from 
above.  It  flows  to  tne  heart  by  the  inner  way  from  God 
when  service  to  fellow  men  has  become  a  matter  between 
the  worker  and  God,  and  evils  are  shunned  as  sins  against 
God,  and  service  rendered  because  God  wills  it.  And  to 
open  the  way  for  this  love  to  the  hearts  of  men,  the  two 
great  commandments  were  given. 

As  the  giving  of  the  ten  commandments  on  mount 
Sinai  introduced  no  new  law  of  morality,  and,  indeed,  no 
new  law  of  outward  conduct  which  had  not  clearly  been 
established  and  obeyed  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  wherever 
society  existed,  so  the  two  great  commandments  contained 
no  absolutely  new  law  of  outward  conduct.  What  the 
promulgation  of  the  law  on  Sinai  did  do  was  to  make 
worship,  morality  and  justice  to  individuals  and  peoples, 
a  matter  between  them  and  God.  So  the  two  great  com- 
mandments make  the  law  of  service  to  every  individual 
and  every  people  a  matter  between  him  or  them  and  their 
Heavenly  Father. 

When  obeyed,  from  necessities  of  outward  life,  obedi- 
ence to  the  law  of  service  becomes  a  habit  of  adjustment 
lo  conditions  of  self-gratification  and  outward  well-being, 
and  leaves  the  essential  character  unchanged.  It  makes 
physical  and  mental  habits  more  or  less  orderly,  and  so 
develops  and  completes  the  outside  of  character.  But  at 
heart  the  character  remains  self-centered  and  self-absorbed, 
and  closed  upward  to  the  inflow  of  love  of  serving  and 
the  abounding  life  of  that  love.  Obeyed  in  outward  con- 
duct, the  law  of  service  must  be  ;  there  can  be  no  love  of 
serving  without  serving ;  but  the  love  comes  to  the  heart 
from  God.  No  human  effort  can  make  or  grasp  love.  The 
human  part  is  to  do  service,  and,  in  doing,  to  put  away 
evil  from  motive,  and  look  to  the  Lord  for  the  new  life  ; 
the  rest  is  in  God's  hand. .  He  gives  the  new  life,  and  gives 
abundantly  ;  gives  with  infinite  desire  and  power  to  give, 
and  infinite  delight  in  giving. 

The  law  of  love  in  the  soul  is  in  perfect  harmony  with 


6  The  Two  Great  Comma^ments 

the  law  of  service  in  conduct  and  conditions  of  outward 
life,  and  also  with  the  law  of  function  of  the  body  in  which 
the  soul  dwells,  and  through  which  it  reaches  the  outer 
world  and  manifests  itself  there.  Love  of  serving,  or,  what 
is  the  same,  love  to  the  neighbor,  reorganizes  the  character 
and  directs  its  forces  into  channels  through  which  they 
flow  out  into  deeds  of  service  naturally.  They  then  act  in 
perfect  harmony  with  the  law  of  service.  By  the  first  birth 
everyone  finds  himself  impelled  by  forces  of  self-love  which 
clash  with  the  law  of  service  in  conduct.  By  the  second 
birth  he  is  endowed  with  love  that  prompts  and  impels  to 
serving  fellow-men.  This  harmony  of  inner  motive  with  the 
order  of  outer  life,  Swedenborg  describes  as  conjunction  of 
the  internal  and  external  man,  or  conjunction  of  good  and 
truth  with  men,  resulting  from  regeneration.  And  what 
Swedenborg  writes  of  this  union,  which  otherwise  frequently 
seems  a  tiresome  reiteration  of  an  abstract  formula,  becomes 
full  of  meaning  and  interest  and  life,  and  close  to  daily 
needs,  when  we  realize  that  the  law  of  service  is  the  law 
of  l-ove  on  the  plane  of  our  conscious  effort  and  our  con- 
duct. The  harmony  of  love  of  serving  with  the  law  of 
outer  and  inner  life  is  the  peace  of  God.  It  is  harmony 
with  the  law  of  existence,  with  the  order  of  the  universe, 
and  with  the  character  and  purpose  of  the  Greater  of  the 
universe.  For  he  creates  from  love  of  serving,  and  creation 
is  service. 

The  law  of  service  on  its  organizing  career  outward 
and  downward  from  its  source  in  the  character  of  God, 
does  not  stop  with  the  character  of  the  individual,  or  with 
the  wonderful  order  of  the  body  in  which  he  dwells;  but 
keeps  on  still  onward  and  outward,  and  becomes  the  organ- 
izing law  of  society.  The  industrial  system,  by  far  the 
grandest  of  all  organizations  of  groups  of  men,  embracing 
all  peoples,  except  perhaps  some  of  the  most  degraded 
savages,  in  an  inconceivably  vast  and  complete  system  of 
service  and  exchange  of  service,  absorbing  the  greater  part 
of  the  mental  and  physical  activity  of  the  race,  is  organ- 
ized by  the  law  of  service.  Whatever  motive  of  worldli- 


in  Economics  7 

ness  or^  selfishness  may  impel  the  actors  in  this  world- wide 
drama,  its  movements,  from  the  very  necessities  of  exist- 
ence, fall  into  the  rhythm  of  the  law  of  service.  Discord 
there  may  be  and  is,  self-love  rebels,  pride  and  craft  of 
individuals  and  classes  pervert  the  system  and  introduce 
misery  and  want,  where,  if  the  law  were  unobstructed, 
there  Avould  be  abundance  for  healthy  living  in  healthy 
homes  for  all  workers ;  but  in  spite  of  the  perversions,  on 
the  whole,  the  law  of  service  for  service  is  inevitable  law 
to  the  mass  of  men. 

From  principles  of  order  inherent  in  the  law,  the 
world's  service  falls  into  classes  corresponding  to  definite 
needs  of  men  and  varying  capacities  to  meet  the  needs. 
Some  serve  in  meeting  physical  needs,  others  in  meeting 
mental,  others  in  meeting  moral  and  spiritual  needs  of 
their  fellow-men.  And,  as  a  rule,  each  finds  himself  in 
some  group  of  workers,  some  office,  profession,  trade,  or 
culling  in  which  he  performs  the  greater  part  of  his  life's 
work. 

One  of  the  first  grand  divisions  of  the  world's  work 
is  into  that  which  falls  to  men  and  that  which  falls  to 
women.  As  a  rule,  the  work  of  women  is  nearer  to  the 
heart  of  life,  a  more  direct  expression  of  love  for  husband 
or  children  or  parents  or  brothers  or  sisters,  or  other  per- 
sons who  are  immediate  objects  of  personal  -affection ;  and 
is  in  home,  or  in  educating  children,  or  in  some  form  of 
direct  service  to  persons.  Man's  work,  on  the  other  hand, 
is,  as  a  rule,  farther  from  such  immediate  personal  rela- 
tion, farther  from  home,  out  in  the  world.  Home,  there- 
fore, comprises  a  large  part  of  the  industrial  system,  for 
there  one-half  of  mankind  do  their  share  of  the  world's 
work.  Moreover,  home  is  the  object  for  which  most  men 
labor,  and  home  affections  are  the  principal  motive  power 
that  impels  the  machinery  of  the  world's  industries,  and 
in  a  broad,  general  sense,  the  world's  work  is  for  the 
world's  homes.  The  great  industrial  system  centers  upon 
home,  and,  still  within  home,  upon  marriage.  The  union 
of  impelling  motive  and  law  of  conduct  which  faithful, 


The  Two  Great  Commandments 

God-fearing  service  brings  about,  is  imaged  forth  in  the 
union  of  husband  and  wife  within  the  home,  which  it  is 
the  first  aim  of  the  industrial  system  to  support. 

The  Church  is  an  essential  constituent  part  of  the  in- 
dustrial system.  He  whose  Church  it  is,  lived  a  life  of 
service,  taught  a  life  of  service,  sent  his  disciples  out  to 
serve,  and  died  in  serving.  His  dying  has  been  magnified 
to  an  infinite  sacrifice,  and  a  whole  system  of  theology 
founded  upon  the  imagined  sacrifice — vicarious  atonement, 
tripersonality  of  God,  obscurity  and  confusion  after  ob- 
scurity and  confusion— to  hide  the  simple  truth  that  the 
life  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  divine  man,  was  a  life  of  simple 
service,  and  that  to  follow  him  is  to  serve  fellow-men. 
As  the  clouds  are  breaking,  men  see  that  to  minister  in 
the  Church  is  to  serve  as  he  served,  and  the  Church  falls 
into  its  place  among  the  groups  of  service  of  man  to  man. 
But,  not  only  is  the  Church  a  part  of  the  industrial  sys- 
tem, because  in  it  its  ministers  do  their  share  of  the  world's 
work ;  it  is,  or  should  be,  an  inspiration  to  the  whole  sys- 
tem. T.o  the  Church  the  workers  should  be  able  to  come 
from  all  their  varied  occupations,  to  realize,  and  help  one 
another  realize,  that  each  one's  work,  whether  in  home'  or 
school  or  field,  on  shipboard  or  in  factory  or  mine,  is  be- 
tween him  and  God ;  that  his  service  to  men  is  service  to 
God,  and  that  God  is  with  him  in  it. 

That  the  State  is  a  part  of  the  industrial  system,  is 
the  principal  lesson  of  the  history  of  progress  in  govern- 
ment, for  the  progress  is  always  toward  making  the  office- 
ers  of  the  State  servants  of  the  people,  and  where  the 
progress  is  most  advanced,  offices  exist  for  service  and 
service  only,  and  are  shorn  of  all  power  or  dignity  or  re- 
ward other  than  such  as  is  necessary  and  fitting  to  the 
service. 

The  law  of  service  is  the  law  of  home  life,  and  civil 
and  social  and  religious  life,  of  manners  and  conduct  and 
motive.  But  its  most  complete  outward  development  and 
expression  and  manifestation  is  in  the  industrial  system. 
In  it  most  men  must,  from  physical  necessities,  and  all 


///  Economics  9 

men  should  of  right,  spend  the  greater  part  of  their  a6Hve 
life.  It  absorbs  the  greater  part  of  human  physical  energy 
and  motive  power  and  thought.  The  more  society  advanc- 
es, the  more  complex  and  highly  organized  and  delicately 
interdependent  the  system  becomes,  the  more  specialized 
its  parts,  the  more  complete  the  harmony  of  its  whole. 

Another  tendency  of  the  system  that  shows  the  guid- 
ing hand  above  it,  is  that,  as  it  develops,  the  Avorker  is 
prompted  less  and  less  directly  by  his  own  personal  wants, 
and  his  thought  is  more  and  more  directly  engaged  in 
serving  the  neighbor.  The  savage  hunts  and  fishes  and 
gathers  berries  and  nuts,  impelled  by  his  own  hunger  or 
the  hunger  of  his  family,  and  the  result  of  his  hunt  goes 
at  once  to  satisfy  his  want.  But  in  organized  industry  of 
a  civilized  community  under  normal  conditions,  the  per- 
sonal want  is  far  in  the  background,  and  for  the  time,  qui- 
escent, in  the  worker's  mind.  In  the  case  of  the  savage, 
the  mind  or  body  or  both  are  occupied  in  satisfying  the 
worker's  own  needs;  but  the  mind  and  energies  of  the 
civili/cd  worker  are  engaged  in  doing  a  special  part  of  a 
whole  system  of  mutual  service,  and  the  conditions  of 
success  are  such  that  his  attention  is  fixed  upon  meeting 
the  needs  of  others.  Moreover,  while  the  savage's  wants 
are  satisfied  by  the  product  of  his  own  labor,  the  wants 
of  the  civilized  laborer  are  supplied  by  the  labor  of  large 
numbers  of  workers  widely  distributed  over  the  Avorld. 
The  industrial  system  is  an  organized  system  of  service 
and  exchange  of  service,  in  which,  as  in  all  normal  organ- 
isms, each  acts  for  all  and  all  for  each,  and  each  becomes 
a  center  toward  which  converge  unnumbered  lines  of  sup- 
ply, and  from  which  go  out  benefits  of  his  own  labor  to 
unknown  and  unnumbered  recipients. 

In  an  entirely  healthy  condition  of  the  industrial  sys- 
tem, the  returns  would  come  to  each  individual  worker 
from  the  whole  body  of  workers,  without  need  for  care 
or  concern  on  his  part,  in  proportion  to  the  service  he 
rendered. 


/0  J^L_Z™°  Great  Commandments 

The  interior  motive  may  be  alike  self-centered  with 
the  civilized  and  the  savage  worker;  but  the  tendency 
of  organized  industry,  when  justly  organized,  is  to  encour- 
age and  develop  a  habit  of  doing  work  without  direct 
thought  of  the  return  to  self. 

So  far  as  the  vast  system  of  service  is  true  to  the  in- 
trinsic law  of  its  being,  it  is  a  training  for  love  to  the 
neighbor.  It  would  make  the  school  of  life  on  earth  the 
school  of  love.  Its  welcome  to  the  youth  would  be  the 
welcome  of  God  to  share  with  him  the  love  of  serving 
which  is  the  motive  power  of  creation,  and  the  welcome 
of  the  world's  best  manhood  to  happy  comradeship  in  do- 
ing the  world's  work.  From  the  enthusiasm  of  boyhood 
through  love  of  sweetheart  and  wife  and  children,  and  de- 
sire for  fellowship  and  good  standing  with  men,  it  would 
lead  him  to  delight  in  doing  his  share  of  the  world's  work,, 
and  this  is  birth  from  above.  Alone  it  could  not  indeed 
accomplish  such  changes.  Environment  alone  cannot  reach 
so  far  into  the  depths  of  character ;  but  it  would  act  in 
entire  harmony  with  revealed  truth,  for  it  is  meant  to  be 
itself  the  law  of  love  in  ultimate  effect.  It  is  the  outer 
world  where  the  new-born  love  of  service  first  dra\vs 
breath,  and  where  it  waxes  strong  and  grows  to  the  stat- 
ure of  spiritual  manhood. 

To  one  who  has  learned  from  observation  and  reflec- 
tion something  of  the  greatness  and  power  for  good,  of 
the  industrial  system,  and  in  the  light  of  revealed  truth 
has  caught  glimpses  of  its  spiritual  meaning  and  intent, 
nothing  can  be  more  astounding  than  its  failure  of  its 
purpose ;  nothing,  except  perhaps  the  failure  of  organized 
religious  bodies  and  their  teachers  to  see  its  divine  intent, 
and  apply  to  it  the  divine  law  of  service. 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  go  into  the  details  of  the 
failure ;  the  w^orld  is  resounding  with  the  story  of  the 
wrongs  and  the  miseries  which  the  failure  entails  upon 
the  workers,  of  human  minds  dwarfed  and  distorted,  and 
human  hearts  hardened,  of  manhood  robbed  of  honesty 


in  Economics  1 1 

and  womanhood  of  purity,  of  a  mad  scramble  for  wealth 
to  escape  the  perils  of  poverty  which  no  honest  industry 
can  confront  with  reasoaable  confidence  of  success.  A 
system  which  engages  the  energies  of  the  great  body  of 
God's  children,  which  has  its  origin  in  the  law  of  love, 
and  which  is  or  should  be  that  law  in  effect  upon  the 
conduct  and  conditions  of  human  life,  and  which  is  based 
upon  the  earth  which  God  has  provided  for  the  birthplace 
and  temporary  dwelling  place  of  his  children,  should  be 
all  beneficent,  and  should  furnish  the  environment  best 
fitted  to  develop  the  highest  manhood,  physical,  moral, 
mental,  affectional  and  spiritual.  Any  result  short  of  this 
is  failure.  Such  failure  must  be  due,  not  to  any  inherent 
and  unavoidable  defect  of  the  law  of  the  system,  which  is 
the  divine  law  of  life,  or  to  any  lack  in  the  earth  to  re- 
spond to  human  needs,  for  it,  too,  is  provided  by  infinite 
wisdom  for  the  best  development  of  manhood ;  but  to 
some  human  interference  with  the  order  of  the  system, 
and  some  human  perversion  of  its  activities. 

It  is  well  known  and  easily  established  as  a  matter 
of  fact  that  there  is  no  failure  of  the  earth  to  yield,  and 
no  failure  in  human  powers  to  produce  what  is  needed  to 
satisfy  all  healthy  human  wants.  Wants  increase,  indeed, 
with  the  intellectual  progress  of  the  race;  so,  too,  does 
human  control  of  the  forces  of  nature  increase  with  the 
intellectual  activity  that  accompanies  the  progress. 

The  failure  is  in  the  distribution  of  the  products  of 
labor,  or  the  distribution  of  service  among  men. 

The  law  of  distribution  of  service,  or  of  the  produfts 
of  labor,  is  a  part  of  the  law  of  service,  an  inevitable  de- 
duction from  the  two  great  commandments.  It  is  that 
service,  and  service  only,  entitles  a  man  in  normal  condition 
to  share  the  service  of  other  men. 

This  statement,  so  simple,  so  in  accord  with  ordinary 
perception  of  right,  seems  at  first  sight  a  mere  truism, 
as  if  one  should  say,  "  It  is  best  to  be  good."  Never- 
theless, the  breach  of  this  law  is  the  cause  of  the  fail- 


12  The  Two  Great  Commandments 

tire    of    the   industrial   system,    or   rather,    it   is   itself    the 
failure. 

Very  few  among  intelligent  Christians  would  have  the 
hardihood  to  deny  the  existence  and  validity  of  this  law ; 
but  in  religious  literature  it  is  rarely  stated  and  still  more 
rarely  carried  to  its  logical  conclusion ;  and  the  failure  to 
see  and  declare  this  law  tends  to  reduce  the  two  great 
commandments  in  Christian  literature  from  laws  of  life 
and  of  conditions  of  life,  to  sentiment.  Libraries  are  writ- 
ten to  extol  the  law  of  love,  with  never  a  word  about  its 
application  to  the  distribution  of  service.  The  law  has 
been  made  to  teach  sacrifice  rather  than  service ;  service 
without  return  is  often  extolled  as  the  Christian  service ; 
blind  obedience  of  slave  or  serf  or  peasant  is  treated  as 
ideal  service ;  the  soldier's  service  is  exalted  above  that 
of  other  workers,  because  it  involves  risks  of  life ;  the 
priest's  service,  because  it  involves  the  giving  up  of  mar- 
riage and  meagerness  of  pay,  is  considered  conducive  to 
spirituality  among  religious  workers ;  anything  but  the 
clear,  frank  recognition  and  statement  of  the  law  of  dis- 
tribution of  service  in  its  simplicity,  grandeur  and  power ; 
anything  but  service  for  service. 

Recognized  crime  against  laws  of  property  is  abund- 
antly condemned  and  inveighed  against.  But  the  princi- 
pal diversions  of  the  produces  of  the  world's  work  from 
the  world's  workers  is  not  by  recognized  crime,  but  by  le- 
galized wrong.  The  wrong  is,  privilege,  or  the  ability  con- 
ferred by  law  or  custom  upon  some  men  or  classes  of  men  to 
secure  the  service  of  other  men  without  rendering  adequate 
service  in  return. 

This  antithesis  of  the  good  of  service  and  its  opposite 
evil  of  privilege  seems  also  like  a  truism.  Nevertheless, 
it  is  privilege  that  infects  the  industrial  system  with 
moral  disorder,  injustice  and  wrong,  and  perverts  its  vast 
influences  to  the  degradation  of  the  manhood  it  is  meant, 
first  of  all,  to  develop  to  its  best  and  highest.  It  is  the 
negation  of  the  law  of  love ;  but  it  takes  on  such  specious 


in  Economics  .  13 

forms,  and  is  so  buttressed  by  tradition,  so  adorned  by 
culture  and  refinement,  and  its  true  nature  is  so  obscured 
by  tortuous  reasonings  that  have  been  evoked  in  the  ages 
of  effort  to  reconcile  it  with  Christianity,  that  to  question 
it  is  hardly  tolerated,  even  in  the  pulpit,  whose  very  rea- 
son for  existence  is  that  the  law  of  love  may  come  home 
to  the  hearts  of  men. 

It  is  not  the  glamor  of  wealth  and  power  alone,  or 
principally,  that  conceals  the  evil  nature  of  privilege  from 
thoughtful  Christians,  but  rather  the  glamor  of  achievement. 
When  the  great  masses  of  material  of  the  pyramids  were  be- 
ing gathered  and  piled  up  by  the  labor  of  slaves,  in  the 
minds  of  most  thoughtful  Egyptians,  no  doubt  the  slavery 
was  justified  by  the  greatness  and  dignity  of  the  achieve- 
ment ;  indeed,  I  have  heard  the  justification  attempted  at  the 
table  of  a  Christian  home.  So,  too,  materialistic  and  intel- 
lectual achievement  in  our  day  imposes  upon  our  minds  and 
conceals  the  evils  with  which  it  is  associated.  We  dwell 
with  admiration  upon  the  industrial  achievement  of  our 
age,  and  rest  in  it.  Achievement  is  for  man,  not  man  for 
achievement;  and  whenever  or  wherever  it  dwarfs  or 
limits  manhood,  it  is  a  curse.  No  thousands  of  miles  of 
railroads  or  telegraphs,  and  no  advance  in  knowledge  or 
control  of  the  forces  of  nature  in  a  country,  can  atone 
for  the  loss  of  a  single  manly  trait  'among  its  people. 
And  yet  undoubtedly  the  great  achievements  of  the  in- 
dustrial system  do  cause  some  thoughtful  and  devoted 
teachers  of  Christianity  to  pause  and  refrain  from  attack- 
ing the  privilege  which  seems  so  interwoven  with  the 
very  existence  of  the  system,  though  it  limits  the  appli- 
cation of  the  central  law  of  life  that  Christ  taught,  and 
excludes  from  its  light  and  warmth  a  large  area  of  the 
field  of  human  activities  and  interests. 

But  revealed  truth  has  spread  far  wide  of  religious 
institutions,  and  become  a  constituent  part  of  human  thought 
and  human  character.  And  to  the  common  stock  of  re- 
vealed truth  which  has  become  character  among  men  is 


H  The  Two  Great  Commandments 

the  final  and  efficient  appeal  from  traditional  and  established 
wrong.  And  so  long  as  the  two  great  commandments  are 
the  central  law  of  life  to  the  thought  of  the  multitudes, 
and  the  holy  spirit  of  truth  is  hovering  over  the  world  of 
truth  and  thought,  ever  ready  to  stir  it  into  activity,  there 
can  be  no  rest  until  privilege  is  abolished  and  the  law  of 
service  holds  sway  in  the  organism  of  human  society  as 
complete  as  in  the  organism  of  the  human  body. 


in  Economics  15 


II 


HE  two  great  commandments  are  one  law,  and  in 
application  of  either  it  becomes  necessary  to  appeal 
to  the  other  also.  Love  to  the  Lord  exists  by  and 
in  love  and  service  to  the  neighbor,  and  without 
service  to  the  neighbor,  the  thought  of  God  descends  to 
a  purely  intellectual  idea  and  passes  into  formulas  of 
words  or  of  worship,  and  becomes  an  unreal  and  shadowy 
thing,-  devoid  of  affection,  trust,  or  fidelity.  The  attempt 
to  love  and  worship  God  without  serving  men  has  re- 
sulted at  all  times  in  religious  formalisms  and  pretence, 
pharasaism,  dogmas  of  salvation  by  faith  alone,  and  spirit- 
ual paralysis. 

The  attempt  to  act  from  love  to  the  neighbor  without 
some  fidelity  to  God  is  equally  a  failure,  because  it  leaves 
the  innate  self-love,  which  is  the  starting-point  of  every 
human  career,  untouched.  Without  obedience  to  God  the 
conduct  can  be  shaped  to  the  law  of  service  under  the  in- 
fluence of  external  necessities ;  but  the  essential  self-cen- 
tered motive  at  the  bottom  of  unregenerate  character,  re- 
mains unchanged.  The  thought  of  God  may  be  vague, 
may  go  no  farther  than  to  the  recognition  of  the  infinite 
goodness  and  power  of  right;  but  without  some  percep- 
tion of  divine  qualities  to  which  fealty  is  due,  love  to  the 
neighbor  has  no  means  of  replacing  the  self-love  which  is 
the  ruling  force  of  unregenerate  character ;  and  if  a  men- 
tal habit  of  useful  effort  exists,  it  is  a  part  of  a  kind  of 
superimposed  second  nature  of  adjustment  to  external  con- 


tf  The  Two  Great  CoytfMfi4ments 

ditions   of    success,    which    is   of    this   world,   and    of    the 
surface  of   life    here.     And    the    clearer   the    recognition  of 
God,  the  more  direct  and  conscious  the   dependence   upon 
him    and   trust  in   him    and    obedience    to    him,   the   more 
favorable   are   the   conditions    for  the   inflow  from    him    of. 
the   new  forces   of   character,  which   of   their   own   nature, ' 
a6l  in  accord  with  the  laws  of  love. 

Therefore,  in  an  effort  like  this  we  are  making  to  ap- 
ply the  great  central  law  of  love  to  a  department  of  con- 
duct and  conditions  of  life,  it  is  necessary  to  appeal  to  the; 
first  as  well  as  to  the  second  of  .the  two  great  command- 
ments. 

We  have  tried  to  apply  the  test  of  the  law  of  love  to 
the  neighbor  to  existing  conditions  and  conduct  of  society ; 
we  have  seen  that  on  this  plane  and  in  this  field  of  appli- 
cation, the  law  of  love  to  the  neighbor  is  the  law  of  serv- 
ice and  of  the  distribution  of  service ;  and  that  the  oppos- 
ing sin  and  evils  are  naturally  grouped  and  classified 
under  the  head  of  privilege  and  the  effects  of  privilege; 
but  now  as  we  approach  the  more  useful  and  important 
stage  of  our  effort,  and  seek  the  cure  for  the  evils,  it  be- 
comes necessary  to  look  at  the  subject  in  the  light  of  the 
whole  of  the  great  central  law,  the  law  of  love  to  the 
Loiv  as  well  as  love  to  the  neighbor. 

Again  it  will  be  helpful  to  recall  the  nature  of  a  di- 
vine commandment.  The  traditional  and  probably  most 
common  thought  of  such  a  commandment  is  that  it  is  an 
expression  of  divine  will,  or  willfulness  even,  and  that 
obedience  to  it  is  exacted  by  God  as  a  condition  of  well- 
being.  It  is  really  law  of  the  relation  of  God  to  man, 
founded  on  the  nature  of  both  God  and  man,  and  is 
spoken  by  God  to  guide  men  to  the  right  relation  to  him, 
and  to  the  fullest  enjoyment  of  the  blessings  he  wills  to 
bestow  upon  them. 

The  law  of  love  to  the  Lord,  when  read  beneath  the 
letter,  is  information  from  infinite  wisd'om  to  man  that  his 
right  and  intended  condition  in  the  universe  is  a  condition 
of  union  in  mutual  love  with  the  Creator  of  the  uni- 


in  Economics  17 

verse ;  that  being  the  object  of  the  Creator's  love  and  the 
end  for  which  all  things  are  created  and  sustained,  it  is 
necessary  to  his  well-being  and  happiness  that  the  love  be 
mutual,  and  that  he  be  conjoined  with  his  Creator  in 
bonds  of  mutual  love.  How  alone  humanity  would  be 
without  the  possibility  of  such  union!  How  fearsome 
would  be  the  prospect  of  an  eternity  of  existence  without 
it !  Such  existence  would  not  be  eternal  life.  In  its  high- 
est meaning,  eternal  life  is  unending  union  with  life  itself, 
and  life  itself  is  God. 

The  rights  of  the  individual  man  are  founded  upon 
his  relation  to  God.  He  stands  among  his  fellow-men  the 
equal  of  any  or  all  of  them  in  being  the  object  of  God's 
love.  He  receives,  indeed,  a  part  of  the  blessings  of  life 
through  them  ;  but  far  more,  directly  from  the  Giver  by 
the  inner  door  to  his  soul.  He  is  in  some  measure  res- 
ponsible to  them,  but  his  first  and  highest  responsibility, 
and,  in  his  deeper  life  of  motive  and  purpose,  his  entire 
responsibility,  is  to  God.  In  the  animal  kingdom,  the  in- 
dividual seems  to  be  an  incident,  and  the  preservation  of 
the  species  the  main  object  of  its  existence.  Individuals 
are  born  and  perish  that  the  species  may  endure.  But 
among  men  the  individual  is  as  enduring  as  the  species; 
he  is  himself  an  object  and  end  of  divine  love ;  and,  being 
such,  he  can  never  perish.  This  is  the  foundation  of  the 
dignity  and  right  to  freedom,  and  to  the  highest  develop- 
ment of  his  own  character,  inherent  in  every  individual 
man.  Without  a  sense  of  direct  relation  to  God  and  re- 
sponsibility to  him,  manhood  is  in  a  state  of  arrested  de- 
velopment, unconscious  of  its  own  greatness  and  worth, 
unconscious  of  its  place  in  the  universe.  In  default  of 
this  sense,  men  assume  an  arbitrary  self-respect,  or  rest 
upon  the  respect  of  other  men  or  upon  pride  or  privi- 
lege of  caste,  and  a  thousand  props  and  makeshifts ;  but 
no  man  knows  the  repose  and  dignity  of  manhood  until 
he  is  conscious  of  its  relation  to  divinity.  With  this  con- 
sciousness, he  need  never  quail  before  other  men,  or  be 
dismaved  by  any  conditions;  he  can  go  forward  with  en- 


18  The  Two  Great  Commandments 

tire  trust  in  the  divine  love  and  care,  following  the  light 
as  God  gives  him  to  see  the  light,  serving  his  fellow-men 
and  working  out  his  destiny. 

The  lawr  of  all  these  relations  of  God  to  man  is  gen- 
eralized in  the  first  great  commandment.  It  is  a  law  of 
giving  and  receiving,  and,  in  application  to  human  life,  is 
the  method  of  receiving  life  and  blessings  of  life  in  the 
largest  possible  measure. 

All  that  comes  to  man  from  without  is  gift  from  God, 
either  direct  or  through  other  men.  And  all  of  life  within 
— that  which  goes  to  make  up  the  man  himself— is  gift  from 
God.  And  the  giving,  both  by  the  inner  and  outer  way, 
is  continuous,  moment  by  moment,  year  by  year,  and  for- 
ever. 

Our  sense  of  the  relation  to  the  Giver,  is  dulled  by 
a  habit  of  thinking  of  the  gift  of  life  as  bestowed  at  birth 
and  continuing  by  a  self-sustaining  power  of  its  own,  and 
of  thinking  of  the  world  around  as  having  been  created  at 
some  time  in  the  past  and  left  with  a  self-sustaining  exist- 
ence. World  and  life  continue,  aye,  are  called  into  pres- 
ent existence,  moment  by  moment,  by  the  creating  and 
sustaining  power  of  Divine  will,  from  which  all  life  and 
forces  flow,  and  shaped  by  the  divine  thought,  from  which 
go  out  all  law  and  method  and  form  of  existence.  And 
life  and  world  are  free  gifts  bestowed  continually  upon  his 
children,  and  the  child's  love  to  God  and  to  fellow-men  is 
response  to  the  giving. 

The  gift  of  life— inflowing,  indwelling  life— is  hardly 
recognized  in  youth  and  early  manhood.  As  the  years  of 
faithful  service  go  on,  the  servant  may  feel  the  cords  of 
inflowing  love  and  life  drawing  his  affeftions  inward  and 
upward  to  their  source ;  but  in  earlier  years  his  activities 
are  in  the  outer  world,  and  his  thought  is  largely  engaged, 
and  rightly  engaged,  on  things  of  environment,  at  best, 
on  his  work  amid  things  of  environment ;  and  his  first 
sense  of  relation  to  God  is  gratitude  for  the  environ- 
ment of  earth.  Just  as  doing  in  the  outer  world  is  the 
means  of  coming  into  love  to  fellow-men,  so  enjoyment 


in  Economics  19 

of  the  outer  world  and  sense  of  receiving  it  as  gift  from 
God  are  means  of  Doming  into  gratitude  and  love  for 
God. 

The  relations  of  God  to  man,  of  which  the  first  great 
commandment  is  the  generalized  law,  are  relations  of  giver 
and  receiver  of  life  within  and  world  without.  The  sense- 
world  is  the  first  of  God's  gifts  recognized  by  the  devel- 
oping man,  and  the  response  of  the  sense-world  to  the 
needs  of  both  body  and  soul  is  the  foundation  of  love  to 
God.  And  although  the  superstructure  rise  far  above 
sense,  until  finally  sense  and  all  that  responds  to  sense  be- 
come incidental,  still,  on  sense  are  life  and  love  and  wis- 
dom based  ;  and  when  the  individual  loses  his  sense-life  of 
earth  through  death  of  the  material  body,  his  love  still 
rests  on  the  sense-world,  now  the  sense-world  of  heaven, 
through  the  senses  of  the  spiritual  body.  For  without  a 
basis  in  sense,  or,  in  other  words,  without  environment, 
there  can  be  no  life.  The  environment  of  earth  is  the 
means  of  union  in  love  with  God  during  the  years  when 
senses  are  keenest  and  sensuous  delights  are  most  engag- 
ing, and  power  for  physical  effort  most  efficient.  In  these 
early  years  of  a  healthy  life,  the  prayer  for  daily  bread  is, 
of  necessity,  prayer  for  the  blessings  of  outer  life. 

If  the  economic  conditions  were  shaped — as  shaped 
they  must  be  before  God's  kingdom  can  come  on  earth  as 
it  is  in  heaven — to  the  two  great  commandments,  the 
youth  on  leaving  the  home  of  his  childhood  would  be 
welcomed  to  his  larger  home  in  the  world  with  the  smile 
of  God.  He  would  feel  his  birthright  to  an  equal  share 
of  God's  love  and  God's  loving  gifts  of  earth.  "  Here  my 
Father  has  placed  me.  I  am  equal  heir  with  all  my  fel- 
lows to  this  fair  earth  about  me,  and  to  all  its  opportuni- 
ties;  heir  to  my  place  where  I  may  stand  upright  and 
free,  and  may  live  out  to  its  fullest  and  best  the  life  he 
gives  me,  and  may  do  my  share  of  the  world's  work  as 
he  gives  me  to  do.  Here  on  th'is  inheritance  from  our 
Father  in  heaven,  the  wife  he  gives  me  and  the  chil- 
dren he  gives  us  shall  live  and  grow  with  me  to  the  full 


20  The  Two  Great  Commandments 

stature  of  the  manhood  and  womanhood  he  made  us  to 
obtain,  and  here  we  will  thank  Him  and  love  Him." 

This,  or  such  as  this,  is  the  attitude  of  youth  and 
early  manhood  to  God,  to  fellow-men,  and  to  the  earth, 
which  the  two  great  commandments  contemplate. 

But  the  youth  who  should  stand  in  this  attitude  to- 
day would  be  called  a  dreamer  of  dreams;  and  if  he  tried 
to  enforce  his  claim  to  his  inheritance  of  God's  earth,  he 
would  come  into  conflict  with  human  laws,  traditions,  and 
customs  and  habits  of  thought.  He  would  find  his  place 
on  earth  held  by  other  men,  his  claim  of  equal  rights  of 
access  to  the  earth  annulled,  and  he  himself  dependent 
upon  other  men  for  what  his  Father  gave  him  outright; 
his  sense  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  and  brotherhood  of 
man  referred  to  the  realms  of  sentiment,  and  the  whole 
system  of  relation  between  him  and  his  fellows  and  their 
common  Father  which  follows  inevitably  from  the  spirit 
and  letter  of  Christ's  teachings,  treated  as  impracticable 
idealism.* 

The  mutual  relations  of  the  Divine  Giver  and  the  hu- 
man recipient  are  confused  and  obscured  by  the  intrusion 
of  perverse  human  institutions  between  the  individual  and 
his  Maker.  The  struggle  of  the  ages  has  been  to  remove 
such  intrusions.  The  still,  small  voice  of  the  conscience 
of  the  people — persuasive  voice  uttering  spiritual  percep- 
tions— amid  the  clamor  of  selfish  interests  is  saying,  "  Stand 
aside  from  between  me  and  God ;  let  me  come  before  him 


*  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  has  clearly  and  beautifully  expressed";in  his  essay 
on  "  The  Conservative,"  the  ideal  attitude  of  the  youth  to  the  earth,  and  the 
conflict  with  man-made  law  into  which  such  attitude  would  bring  him.  But 
he  evidently  saw  no  practicable  way  to  establish  the  right  relation  of  man  to 
the  earth,  or,  in  other  words,  to  reconcile  the  right  of  equal  access  to  the  earth 
with  the  security  of  occupancy  necessary  to  the  best  use  of  the  earth.  He  ex- 
pressed the  longing  for  justice  in  the  relations  of  men  to  the  land,  which  was 
then  (1841)  deep  and  intense  in  the  minds  of  many  of  those  who  were  looking 
for  higher  life.  Nearly  forty  years  later,  some  of  them  welcomed  with  thank- 
ful hearts  the  grand  discovery — one  of  the  grandest,  it  seems  to  me,  of  mod- 
ern science — of  the  simple  means  or  method,  which  the  evolution  of  the  in- 
dustrial system  has  rendered  practicable,  of  accomplishing  the  end. 


in  Economics  21 

as  he  made  me  to  come,  in  the  full  stature  of  manhood." 
And  privilege  is  alwa;  s  talking  back  with  grandiloquent 
assertions  of  its  own  importance  and  greatness.  The  con- 
science of  the  people,  which  is,  in  fact,  the  common  stock 
of  revealed  truth  woven  into  the  fiber  of  human  character, 
arranged  and  arrayed  against  evils  under  the  influence 
and  with  the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  of  truth,  has  set 
aside  claims  of  priesthood  to  authority,  and  of  divine 
right  of  kings  and  classes  to  rule  over  minds  and  bodies 
of  men,  and  a  thousand  forms  of  intrusion  of  swelling 
self-love  between  God  and  men, — forms  of  special  privi- 
lege of  individuals  or  classes.  And  steadily,  through  all 
this  setting  aside  of  human  arrogance  and  usurpation  of 
divine  authority,  the  view  of  God  has  been  growing  clear- 
er and  truer,  and  responsibility  to  Him  more  direct;  and 
steadily  the  individual  man  has  risen  to  a  higher  appreci- 
ation of  his  dignity  as  a  child  of  God ;  and  widespread 
and  widening  recognition  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  and 
the  brotherhood  of  man  is  emerging  from  amid  the  debris 
of  customs  and  traditions  and  laws  founded  upon  privi- 
lege, or,  what  is  the  same,  widespread  and  widening  recog- 
nition of  the  voice  of  God  in  the  law  of  love. 

But  there  still  remains  among  the  most  advanced 
peoples  forms  of  privilege  sanctioned,  as  far  as  evil  can 
be  sanctioned,  by  law. 

And  here  on  the  border  line  of  truth  from  above  and 
truth  from  round  about,  or  of  revealed  truth  and  truth 
from  outward  experience,  it  is  necessary  to  take  into  con- 
sideration economic  facts  and  generalization  of  facts.  In 
every  application  of  revealed  truth  to  actual  life,  there 
must  be  consideration  of  outward  conduct  and  conditions, 
and  so,  in  an  effort  to  see  economic  facts  in  the  light  of 
the  two  great  commandments,  we  must  marshal  the  facts. 

The  principle  privilege  which  so  perverts  the  indus- 
trial system  of  the  world,  and  robs  it  of  its  power  to 
confer  its  highest  blessings,  and  sickens  it  with  injustice 
and  misery,  must  lie  near  to  the  heart  of  the  system.  It 
must  be  some  breach,  not  only  of  the  law  of  service,  or 


The  Two  Great  Commandments 

the  second  great  commandment,  but  also  of  the  law  of 
relations  of  God  to  man,  or  the  first  great  commandment. 
It  is  one  that  disturbs  the  relations  of  man  to  God  and 
to  the  earth  on  which  God  has  placed  him  and  to  his  fel- 
low-man. This  privilege  is  the  private  and  exclusive  own- 
ership of  land,  the  monopoly  by  some  men  of  the  earth, 
which  is  the  gift  of  God  to  all  men. 

That  the  earth  is  created  and  sustained  for  all  men 
alike,  follows  so  directly  and  inevitably  from  the  doctrine 
of  creation  by  a  God  of  infinite  love,  is,  in  fact,  so  essen- 
tial a  part  of  the  doctrine,  that  it  cannot  be  debatable 
among  men  who  accept  the  doctrine  with  any  sense  of 
its  scope  and  bearing.  It  is  axiomatic  to  the  mind  that 
accepts  the  doctrine,  and  the  law  of  love.  It  is  a  part  of 
the  relations  of  God  and  man  taught  in  the  first  great 
commandment.  The  private  and  exclusive  ownership  of 
land,  therefore,  thwarts  the  first  great  commandment  of 
the  central  law  of  Christian  life.  It  thwarts  equally  the 
second  great  commandment,  for  the  rent-value  of  land 
is  due  to  the  presence  and  labor  of  the  community  at 
large,  and  exclusive  ownership  of  the  land  by  individuals 
enables  them  to  take  for  themselves  what  is  the  product 
of  the  labor  of  the  whole  community,  and  this  is  to  obtain 
the  service  of  other  men  without  rendering  adequate  serv- 
ice in  return,  in  other  words,  it  is  privilege. 

But,  while  from  revealed  truth  we  know  that  the 
earth  belongs  alike  to  all  men,  from  observation  of  and 
experience  amid  actual  conditions  of  life,  we  know  that 
the  land  must  be  occupied  and  securely  held  by  some 
men  to  the  exclusion  of  others. 

At  first  sight  the  law  from  above  and  the  outward 
condition  seem  irreconcilable.  But  law  and  condition  are 
from  the  same  infinite  wisdom.  He  who  made  the  law  of 
living,  made  also  the  conditions  of  living ;  and  there  can 
be  no  conditions  in  the  environment  of  the  race  or  of  an 
individual,  amid  which  the  law  of  conduct  does  not 
apply. 

The  methods    of   applying    the    law  of   equal    right   of 


in  Economics  23 

access  to  the  earth  must  vary  with  the  degree  and  kind 
of  development  of  society.  They  should  improve  as  civil- 
ization advances.  But  the  law  itself,  striking,  as  it  does, 
at  the  root  of  privilege,  is  obstructed  and  obscured  both 
by  the  brute  force  and  the  perverted  intellectual  powers 
that  are  exerted  to  maintain  privilege,  and  so  it  comes  to 
pass  that  in  our  time  it  is  necessary  both  to  establish  the 
law  itself  in  the  minds  of  men,  and  to  point  out  the 
method  of  applying  it.  We  have  found  that  the  law 
flows  from  the  central  law  of  life.  We  shall  find  the 
method  of  applying  it  in  the  nature  of  things,  that  is  to 
say,  in  the  nature  of  the  relation  of  humanity  to  the  earth, 
and  find  it  emerging  as  the  order  of  society  emerges  from 
the  debris  of  arbitrary  human  laws. 

But  first  it  will  be  well  to  glance  at  some  of  the 
methods  of  the  past,  for  there  have  been  such  methods 
all  along  the  line  of  experience  of  society.  The  instinct 
or  sense  of  equal  right  to  the  soil  has  asserted  itself  and 
been  kept  alive  through  the  ages  of  suppression  through 
abuse  of  physical  and  intellectual  power. 

In  the  Israelitish  code  the  right  of  access  to  the 
good  land  given  by  Jehovah  was  to  be  maintained  by 
re-distribution  of  the  land  among  the  families  at  stated 
times.  In  Russia  certain  portions  of  the  land  which  the 
classes  have  not  monopolized  are  controlled  by  the  peo- 
ple, and  this  common  property  is  distributed  from  time 
to  time  by  the  mir  or  village*  community  to  the  families 
of  the  community,  according  to  the  number  of  persons  in 
each  and  their  ability  to  use  the  land.  It  is  but  a  few 
generations  since  the  Scotch  and  Irish  chief  held  the  land 
of  his  clan  in  trust  for  the  families  of  the  clan.  By  feudal 
institutions,  when  carried  to  their  logical  results,  land  was 
held  in  trust  from  the  sovereign  or  other  lord,  on  condi- 
tion that  the  !~  older  should  render  certain  defined  service, 
or  pay  a  certain  fixed  tribute  to  the  sovereign  or  lord, 
who,  "in  the  system,  represented  the  community ;  and  so, 
in  a  crude  and  imperfect  way,  the  value  of  the  land  was 
theoretically  shared  by  the  community.  In  England,  from 


24  The  Two  Great  Commandments 

the  eleventh  to  the  sixteenth  centuries  the  tribute  paid 
by  the  actual  users  of  the  land  was  very  light,  not  graded 
to  the  value  of  the  land,  and  remaining  unaltered  on 
agricultural  land  at  from  six  pence  to  eight  pence  an  acre, 
and  paid  nominally  for  necessary  protection  and  gov- 
ernment.* 

And  now  in  English  law  there  is  no  absolute  owner- 
ship of  lands  vested  in  individuals,  but  land  is  held  by  in- 
dividuals in  trust  from  the  community,  because,  as  is  ex- 
plained, the  community  has  deemed  it  best  that  its  lands 
should  be  so  entrusted,  and  the  community  can  legally  re- 
sume possession  of  its  land  whenever  it  wills  to  do  so.** 

In  our  own  country  from  its  settlement  until  the  last 
thirty  years  land  has  been  of  comparatively  ready  access 
to  the  mass  of  the  people,  although  to  avail  themselves 
of  it  they  have  had  to  migrate  t:  the  frontier  and  give 
up  much  of  the  good  of  sociicy  lilD.  To  this  approach  to 
free  access  to  land  is  due  tli3  great  movement  of  popula- 
tion westward  within  the,  country,  and  to  the  country 
from  Europe.  And  much  more  is  due  to  it.  Whatever 
of  dignity  and  freedom  and  strength  of  individual  man- 
hood characterizes  Americans  as  a  people,  is  plainly  trace- 
able principally  to  the  comparative  freedom  of  access  to  the 
lar.J  which  has  existed  to  within  the  last  thirty  years.*** 


*  This  has  been  clearly  brought  out  by  the  late  Thorold  Rogers,  Professor 
of  Political  Economy  in  Oxford  University,  in  his  two  great  works,  "  Six  Cent- 
uries of  Work  and  Wages,"  and  "Economic  Interpretation  of  History."  He 
has  also  shown  that  in  those  centuries  in  England,  "  Of  poverty  which  perishes 
unheeded,  of  willingness  to  do  honest  work  and  a  lack  of  opportunity,  there 
was  none." 


**  The  late  Lord  Chief  Justice  Coleridge  has  set  this  forth  clearly  in  an 
address  delivered  before  the  Glasgow  Juridical  Society,  published  in  Macmil- 
lan's  Magazine,  April,  1888. 


***  There  is  still  public  land  unoccupied,  but  it  is  all,  c-  nearlv  all,  below 
the  "  margin  of  cultivation,"  that  is,  too  poor  from  barrenness,  inaccessibility,  or 
other  cause,  to  be  profitably  used  under  present  conditions. 


in  Economics  25 

But  this  partial  freedom  of  access  to  the  land  has  ceased 
with  the  passing  of  the  public  land  to  private  and  corpor- 
ate ownership. 

Plainly,  none  of  the  methods  already  cited  of  securing 
to  the  masses  some  share  of  the  land  is  adequate  to  maintain 
the  equal  right  of  access  to  the  earth,  and  none  can  have 
more  than  a  very  restricted  application  in  a  settled  coun- 
try of  high  industrial  activity  and  development.  Some  far 
more  efficient  and  complete  method  is  necessary  to  se- 
cure to  every  man  born  on  the  earth  the  share  of  the 
earth  which  is  his  by  inheritance  from  God. 

Economic  forces  flow  from  the  Creator's  will  as  truly 
as  do  the  forces  of  the  material  world,  and  economic  laws 
proceed  from  the  Creator's  thought  as  truly  as  do  the  laws 
of  the  material  world.  And  it  is  among  laws  of  divine 
origin  existing  in  the  nature  of  things  and  of  men,  that 
we  must  seek  the  method  of  securing  to  all  men  equal 
right  of  access  to  the  earth. 

When  economic  forces  have  free  play,  there  is  a  qual- 
ity or  condition  inseparable  from  the  occupancy  and  use 
of  land  by  men  living  in  well-developed  social  relations, 
which  constitutes,  indeed,  an  essential  part  of  the  relations 
of  the  community  to  the  earth.  It  is  ground-rent* 

Ground-rent  is  inevitable  under  conditions  of  economic 
freedom.  As  already  shown,  when  economic  forces  were 
hampered  by  military  control,  rent  proper  was  replaced 
bv  a  more  or  less  arbitrary  tribute.  What  may  be  called 


*  The  whole  subject  of  the  nature  of  ground-rent,  and  the  effects  of  hav- 
ing it  taken  by  individuals  or  by  the  community  at  large,  is  best  treated  from 
the  economic  side  by  Henry  George  in  "  Progress  and  Poverty,"  "  Social  Prob- 
lems," "  Condition  of  Labor,"  and  other  works.  Other  philosophers  had  seen 
the  abstrad  right  to  the  soil,  but  none  had  seen  the  remedy  and  brought  it 
prominently  to  public  view,  until  Henry  George  did.  Others  had  seen  the  evils 
of  private  ownership  of  land,  but  George  not  only  saw  the  disease,  but  the  rem- 
edy. I  must  refer  to  his  works  for  details  of  the  subjed.  Here  I  can  only 
bring  forward  enough  of  them  to  illustrate  the  application  of  the  two  great 
commandments  to  economics. 


26  The  Two  Great  Commandments 

natural  ground-rent,  and  what  Rogers  calls  "  competitive 
rent "  in  contradistin6lion  to  the  feudal  tribute,  began  to 
develop  in  England  freely  when  Henry  VIII.  sold  the  con- 
fiscated lands  of  the  Church  and  of  the  laborers'  guilds 
to  the  rich  burghers,  principally  traders  and  manufacturers, 
who  naturally  treated  land  as  private  property  on  com- 
mercial principles.  As  military  control  and  arbitrary  legis- 
lation have  become  more  and  more  restricted,  and  econ- 
omic forces  less  trammeled,  true  ground-rent  has  become 
a  more  and  more  fixed  and  definite  factor  in  social  rela- 
tions. Under  conditions  of  free  economic  development, 
"  rent  of  land  is  determined  by  the  excess  of  its  produce 
over  that  which  the  same  application  can  secure  from  the 
least  productive  land  in  use." 

This  definition  of  ground-rent  is  treated  in  the  litera- 
ture of  political  economy  generally  as  a  statement  of  a 
law,  called,  from  the  author  who  first  brought  it  promi- 
nently into  notice,  "  The  Law  of  Ricardo,"  and  probably 
it  is  the  one  generalization  of  the  science  of  political  econ- 
omy which  has  become  most  widely  accepted.  It  can 
hardly  be  regarded  as  other  than  a  truism ;  but,  neverthe- 
less, it  has  proved  a  useful  truism,  for  it  has  helped  to 
establish  the  truth  that  rent  is  in  no  wise  arbitrary,  but 
exists  in  the  nature  of  things,  and  attaches  itself  to  the 
use  of  land  as  a  definite  and  unavoidable  condition. 

Ground-rent  is  plainly  dependent  upon  the  existence 
of  society.  In  an  uninhabited  wilderness  land  has  no  rental 
value.  Within  the  memory  of  pioneers  now  living  in  well 
populated  districts  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  on  very  valu- 
able lands,  these  same  lands  had  no  rental  value  whatever. 
Rent  grows  with  the  growth  of  society,  and  is  largest  at 
centers  of  population. 

Ground-rent  is  a  product  of  the  labor  of  the  commun- 
ity at  large.  No  individual  owner  or  occupant  of  a  piece 
of  land  can  add  more  than  a  trifle  to  the  value  of  it.  He 
may  put  improvements  upon  it,  may  enrich  the  soil,  may 
fence  and  till  it,  may  build  costly  structures  on  it,  and  it 


in  Economics  27 

is  common  to  confound  the  value  of  such  improvements 
with  the  value  of  the  land,  but  ground-rent  in  the  sense 
of  the  word  as  used  by  political  economists  and  in  the 
sense  here  intended,  is  the  rental  value  of  the  bare  land 
exclusive  of  all  improvements  of  any  kind  upon  it.  The 
value  of  a  city  lot  is  due  to  the  labor  of  the  people  who 
dwell  in  the  city,  and  in  the  country  that  centers  upon  the 
city.  Increase  of  working  population,  additional  industrial 
establishments,  development  of  schools,  advancement  in 
intelligence  and  morality  of  the  inhabitants,  all  acid  to  the 
rental  value  of  the  land  of  the  city,  and  so  does  every 
railroad  that  reaches  the  city,  every  improvement  to  its 
harbor,  and  every  means  of  access  to  the  city  or  locomo- 
tion within  it. 

Ground-rent  not  only  exists  in  the  nature  of  things 
where  economic  forces  are  free  to  act,  but  it  is  a  very 
definite  quantity,  not  to  be  arbitrarily  raised  or  lowered 
to  any  considerable  extent.  If,  for  example,  the  land  own- 
ers of  a  city  should  conspire  to  raise  the  ground-rent  there 
beyond  what  the  advantages  of  position  and  the  industrial 
development  of  the  city  establish,  the  business  of  that  city 
would  drift  awav  to  other  cities,  till  rent  should  find 
again  its  normal  level.  How  sensitive  business  and  popu- 
lation are  to  any  increase  of  ground-rent  beyond  its  normal 
value,  is  well  illustrated  by  the  fa<5t  that  seaport  cities, 
however  much  in  need  of  funds,  dare  not  raise  port  charges 
(a  form  of  ground-rent)  beyond  what  is  normal,  for  well- 
grounded  fear  of  driving  their  commerce  awray  to  other 
ports.  What  is  true  of  city  lots  in  this  respeft,  is  true  of 
all  land. 

Ground-rent,  the  product  of  the  labor  of  the  commun- 
ity at  large,  bears  also  a  very  definite  relation  to  the 
wants  of  the  community  as  a  body,  and  is  itself  sufficient 
for  those  wants,  just  as  in  healthy  economic  conditions, 
the  product  of  the  labor  of  the  individual  is  sufficient  for 
the  needs  of  himself  and  his  family.  It  is  a  matter  of  as- 
certained fad,  for  example,  that  the  rental  value  of  land 


28  The  Two  Great  Commandments 

in  the  United  States  is  somewhat  more  than  all  the  pres- 
ent revenues,  national,  state,  county,  and  municipal.* 

Now,  ground-rent,  the  product  of  the  labor  of  the 
whole  community,  is  diverted  from  its  producer  to  indi- 
vidual land  owners,  while  the  community,  thus  deprived 
of  its  own  proper  income,  supports  itself  by  taking  from 
the  individual,  in  the  form  of  taxes,  a  part  of  the  product 
of  his  labor. 

By  simply  righting  this  wrong  and  taking  for  its  own 
use  as  a  body  the  product  of  its  own  labor,  namely,  the 
rental  value  of  land,  and  leaving  to  every  individual  the 
product  of  his  own  labor,  undiminished  by  taxation  of  any 
kind,  the  community  would  secure  to  each  and  every  in- 
dividual member  an  equal  share  of  the  benefit  of  the  land, 
and  at  the  same  time  secure  to  the  users  of  the  land  the 
safe  and  exclusive  occupancy  necessary  to  the  best  use  of 
land. 

Here,  then,  we  have  in  the  application  of  a  primary, 
axiomatic  principle  of  justice — leaving  to  each  his  own, 
and  taking  for  the  whole  its  own — the  method  of  establish- 
ing equal  right  of  access  to  the  earth  among  men. 

To  illustrate  the  method  more  fully,  let  us  look  into 
the  effects  of  its  application. 

It  would  impose  no  additional  burden  upon  the  user 
of  land.  He  would  pay  for  the  land  he  occupies,  as  he 
now  does,  its  rental  value;  but  he  would  pay  it  to  the 
community,  while  now  he  pays  it  to  some  individual  land 
owner,  either  as  rent  proper  or  interest  on  purchase  money. 
No  one  would  hold  land  out  of  use  for  rise  of  value,  or 
hold  land  at  all  that  he  did  not  use,  for  there  would  be 
no  motive  for  doing  so,  and  to  do  so  would  be  expensive, 
when  the  rental  value  all  goes  to  the  public  treasury.  All 
land  would  then  be  available  for  use,  and  would  naturally 
fall  into  occupancy  by  those  who  needed  it  and  could  use 


*  The  necessary  data  for  conclusions  in  this  matter  are  presented  in  read- 
ily available  form  in  "  Natural  Taxation,"  by  Thomas  G.  Shearman,  published 
by  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1895. 


in  Economics  29 

it  to  the  best  purpose.  No  laborer  would  accept  as  wages 
for  his  work  less  than  the  value  of  the  product  that  a 
like  amount  and  quality  of  work  would  produce  from  the 
land.  The  city  workman  might  not,  indeed,  be  able  to  go 
to  the  land,  but  the  country  boy  who  now  comes  to  the 
city  to  compete  with  him,  in  blind  hope  of  winning  what 
he  knows  is  denied  him  in  the  conditions  he  leaves  behind 
—the  means  of  maintaining  a  healthy  home — would  then 
stay  on  the  land,  and  support  there  the  wife  and  babies 
his  heart  yearns  for,  and  soon  the  congestion  of  cities 
would  be  a  thing  of  the  past.  The  relation  of  employer 
and  employed  would  become  an  entirely  mutual  relation, 
with  no  more  dependence  of  the  one  than  of  the  other. 
Both  labor  and  capital  would  be  freed  of  taxation.  Cap- 
ital could  no  longer  be  employed  in  maintaining  mo- 
nopoly, and  must  be  devoted  to  co-operating  with  labor 
in  useful  productions.  Then  the  capitalist  could  always 
feel  that  his  gain  was  gain  also  to  the  community  at  large. 
Competition,  under  conditions  of  free  access  to  land  and 
natural  opportunities,  would  be  healthy  rivalry  for  excel- 
lence in  service. 

There  is  no  need  to  go  into  details  here  of  the  bene- 
fits that  would  follow  the  adoption  of  this  method  of  re- 
conciling the  equal  right  of  access  to  the  earth  of  all  men 
with  the  necessary  exclusive  occupancy  of  land  by  some 
men,  farther  than  to  illustrate  that  it  is  an  entirely  practic- 
able method,  and  at  the  present  stage  of  economic  devel- 
opment, the  method  of  establishing  the  equal  right  of  all 
men  to  the  earth. 

To  establish  this  right  is  to  overthrow  privilege  in  its 
last  stronghold.  There  are,  indeed,  other  minor  forms  of 
privilege,  created  by  unwise  or  perverse  legislation,  such 
as  monopoly  of  transportation  (which,  however,  depends 
upon  a  kind  of  monopoly  of  land),  and  monopoly  of  the 
means  of  exchange.  But  the  one  great  privilege  still  re- 
maining after  all  the  struggles  of  the  ages,  is  private  own- 
ership of  land,  or  monopoly  of  natural  opportunities.  It 
is  this  that  hardens  the  heart  and  darkens  the  spirit  of  the 


The  Two  Great  Commandments  in  Economics 


great  industrial  system,  that  gives  the  lie  to  the  law  of 
service,  and  answers  back  to  Christianity  with  a  sneer ;  it 
is  the  anti-Christ  of  economics. 

Remove  this  last  great  privilege,  and  the  law  of  the 
order  of  the  industrial  system  will  be  the  law  of  service, 
and  the  "  kingdom  of  uses "  on  earth  will  be  the  school 
for  the  "  kingdom  of  uses  "  which  is  heaven.  There  will 
still  be  growth  in  warmth  and  intensity  of  love  and  life, 
and  readjustments  in  outer  form  to  the  fuller  inflow  of 
spirit.  But  there  will  be  no  great  discord  in  the  harmony 
of  the  social  system.  There  will  still  and  forever  remain 
to  each  individual  to  choose  between  self-love  and  love  of 
the  world  on  one  hand,  and  love  to  the  Lord  and  the 
neighbor  on  the  other.  But  the  daily  influence  and  per- 
vading spirit  of  the  work  of  life  will  all  tend  to  encour- 
age and  develop  and  call  out  the  love  of  serving.  The 
teaching  and  implication  of  the  daily  experiences  of  life  will 
be  illustration  and  confirmation  of  the  law  of  life  learned 
from  revealed  truth.  Divine  Providence  and  care  will  be 
felt  as  a<5tual  experience  in  a  great,  protecting,  loving  sys- 
tem of  mutual  service.  Manhood  will  take  on  new  free- 
dom and  dignity  from  new  sense  of  direct  responsibility 
to  the  Heavenly  Father,  and  sense  of  trust  in  daily  duties. 
Economics  will  be  firm  foundation  for  Christianity,  for 
the  whole  order  of  the  economic  system  will  center  upon 
and  radiate  from  the  Two  Great  Commandments. 

JAMES    E.    MILLS. 


•  U^cw  Earth  Triitt  • 
540  'Pearl  Street  •   (T^c-w  York 


PAT.  JAN.  21.  1908 


U.C.BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


